The Complete Drive-In Page 17

  I had decided that if there was a God, he was a cruel sonofabitch to allow the things he allowed. Especially since he claimed his name was synonymous with love. It seemed to me that he was little more than a celestial Jack the Ripper, offering us, his whores, rewards with one hand, smiling and telling us he loved us, while with the other hand he held a shiny, sharp knife, the better with which to disembowel us.

  “I don’t know what I believe anymore,” Crier said, “but I feel I owe the boy some words because he’s a human being. It doesn’t matter if I’m talking to the wind, or just myself. I didn’t give him the best kind of burial, so it’s the least I can do. And who knows, if there is some God out there, maybe he’ll be listening.”

  Crier said this soft and solemn like, and you could almost hear the organ music in the background. I think Bob was as affected as I was by Crier’s remarks, because he didn’t say anything rude, and something of that sort was always on the tip of his tongue. A lump, like a crippled frog trying to make it downhill, moved in my throat.

  Crier went over to the grave and looked at the hubcap, picked it up and looked at the soles of Sam’s feet, put the hubcap back, sighed, looked at the jungle.

  “I’m here to say some words about this man, but nothing much comes to me. I didn’t really know the poor bastard, but from what I could tell, he was about the dumbest sonofabitch that ever shit over a pair of shoes.

  “Still, he was a man, and he deserved better than this. I’m sorry I couldn’t get him buried proper, couldn’t get his feet to stay down, but I did get his ass in the grave, and that was a job. I hope he rests in peace.

  “I’m sorry about his wife, Mable. She wasn’t any better or smarter than he was, from what I could tell, maybe a damn sight dumber. But I guess she did the best she could, like all of us. She’s back at the drive-in, burned up under some lumber pieces, just in case you care.

  “And listen, God, if you’re out there, how about some relief around here? Lighten up. Things are multiple-fucked-up, and if anyone can put things straight, it ought to be you. Right? I mean, you hear what I’m saying? Give us some sign of good things to come. It would be appreciated. Okay, that’s it. Amen.”

  Crier walked back to the truck, and about the time he reached it, the jungle parted and out stepped a nasty red-and-blue dinosaur that was probably a baby Tyrannosaurus Rex, or something close enough to be a double cousin to one.

  Whatever it was, it stood on big hind legs and held two puny forelegs in front of itself as if pleading. Its face was mostly teeth.

  Toothy sniffed the air delicately, scampered over to the grave, snapped at the hubcap with its mouthful of big, sharp teeth, and managed to gulp it and Sam’s feet down with very little chewing.

  After a moment, Toothy coughed and spat out the hubcap, which now resembled a wad of aluminum foil. He used one clawed foot to scratch Sam out of the grave the way a chicken might scratch a worm from the dirt, bent and bit into Sam’s corpse. With a series of rapid head-flipping motions, he proceeded to gobble the old boy so viciously that pieces of Sam flew out of Toothy’s mouth and sprinkled the grass.

  Finished with his repast, Toothy eyed us, as if giving the dessert counter a once-over.

  We stayed very still. Rocks couldn’t have been that still.

  He let out a little honk that shook the truck, then started to turn toward the jungle.

  A weight watcher, to our relief.

  But before he could make a complete turn, he froze, turned his head slightly to the side and acquired a look akin to that of a patient who has just experienced the greased finger of the doctor up his ass. Then with a grunt, Toothy leaned slightly forward and cut a monster fart that was reminiscent of an air horn, but with more tonality.

  When the fart was finished and Toothy had adopted a more satisfied and comfortable look, he moved into the jungle and out of sight.

  After a moment of silence, Bob said, “Well, Crier, hope that wasn’t the sign from God you were waiting for.”

  3

  We drove along for a while, and finally Crier, who had been looking pretty distressed for a time, pulled over and killed the motor.

  “What’s up?”

  “Sam,” he said. “I can’t get him out of my mind.”

  “Hell, you buried him, didn’t you? Wasn’t your fault all you had was a hubcap. And that dinosaur even gave him a musical salute after he ate him. Tomorrow sometime, Sam will be fertilizing a patch of ground. What more could you ask for?”

  “Fuck Sam. It’s me I’m talking about. I don’t want to end up buried alongside the road like that.”

  “You aren’t dead, Crier.”

  “But I might get that way, and I don’t want to end up in some trench next to the highway where something can dig me up and eat me.”

  “Something doesn’t dig you up, the worms are going to take care of you, so what’s the difference? Maybe we could just leave you where you lie and save the dinosaurs some digging.”

  “That’s nice. I’m pouring out my heart here and you’re making fun. I don’t want to be left beside the road and I don’t want to be buried beside it neither.”

  “Perhaps we could arrange for you to be whisked away to heaven.”

  “I want to be carried to the end of the highway.”

  “Keep driving, and if we don’t run out of gas, that’s a wish you’ll get. You don’t even have to be dead. Have you noticed the gas mileage we’re getting? It’s got to be super or the gas gauge is fucked.”

  “Forget the goddamn gas gauge and the mileage, I’m serious here. I get croaked, you guys make sure I get to the end of the highway. Something about that appeals to me. I like the idea of finishing things. Dinosaur eats me there, so be it.”

  “Crier, if you’re dead, it doesn’t matter if fifty naked girls with tits like zeppelins are at the end of the highway ready to suck your dick until your balls cave in. You’ll still be dead.”

  “Promise me that should something happen to me you’ll make sure I get to the end of the highway to be buried.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay what?”

  “If you get killed. I’ll see you get to the end of the highway and get buried or cremated or something.”

  “Not cremated, I don’t like that.”

  “Tried it?”

  “Just bury me. I’ll make you the same promise if you like.”

  “Something happens to me, leave me in the bushes. I’ll be past caring.”

  Bob rose up in back and tapped on the glass with an elbow, held out his hands to question why we had stopped.

  Crier waved him down, started up the engine and pulled back onto the highway.

  “I’m going to talk to Bob about it too,” Crier said. “Think he’ll do it?”

  “Who knows about Bob?” I said.

  We finally came to a clearing on the right-hand side of the highway. There was grass, but it wasn’t high, and I figured a lot of critters had been grazing on it. In the distance I could see the blue of a great lake. Or what looked like a lake. I still felt as if I were on a movie set. Reality was not to be trusted.

  Crier turned off the highway and drove over the grass, and it seemed like it took forever to reach the lake. He parked about six feet from it, jumped out and went belly down on the bank and stuck his face into the water and began to drink.

  It was real water.

  I opened my door and tried to get out, but it was too far a step and too much pressure on my feet to manage it.

  I sat and waited for Crier to finish drinking. If there had been any moisture in my mouth I would have salivated.

  When Crier was done he came over and got me out of the truck. The grass was soft and I found I could hobble across it without too much support from Crier.

  “I couldn’t wait,” Crier said. “Sorry.”

  “I’d have done the same,” I said.

  The water was cool and sweet, and pretty soon Crier had Bob beside me, then all three of us were lying there on our bellies
drinking. I was the first to overdo it. I puked up the water and the sardines on the bank, and Bob and Crier followed shortly thereafter.

  We finished puking and went to drinking again, slower this time, and when we were finished, we pulled off what we were wearing and went into the water, Bob and I entering it on elbows and knees, looking like pale alligators.

  Waterlogged, we climbed on the bank and lay on our backs and looked at the sky. The sun went down—in the south, go figure—and the lake went dark and the moon rose up—in the south, go figure again—and the water turned the color of molten silver.

  After we had talked a while about this and that, Crier said, “I’m one tired sonofabitch, boys. Let’s call it a night.”

  Crier got us in the camper and stood at the tailgate. He said, “I’m in no hurry to leave. I like that water. What say we stick around a while? The highway’s out there when we decide to try it again.”

  Sounded good to me, and I said so.

  “Yeah,” Bob said. “The idea of going off and leaving all that water doesn’t excite me right now. Maybe just because I been thirsty for so long. But yeah, let’s wait a while.”

  Crier nodded and went around to the cab to sleep. I lay down on my bedroll, and for the first time since before the big red comet, I felt a stirring of hope. Or maybe I had drunk too much water.

  Whatever, it wasn’t so exciting it kept me awake.

  4

  Next day Crier drove the truck to the other side of the lake, near the jungle, and that became our home. In spite of the water, we hadn’t planned to stay as long as we did, but one day rolled into the next.

  The jungle provided all kinds of fruit, and in defiance of the age of dinosaurs, all manner of recognizable animals from rabbits to squirrels to monkeys to snakes. All of these were good to eat, but in the beginning we left them alone. Not out of any respect for the lesser species, but simply because we couldn’t catch the little bastards and had nothing suitable to kill or trap them with. Also, Bob and I were still crips, and you’ve got to have legs to run critters down.

  Crier made a spear by breaking off a long, thin limb in such a way that it left a point. He put fruit rinds in the lake and stood in the water with them floating around him. He waited for fish to come and nibble at the rinds, then he tried to spear them.

  Sometimes it took all day for him to get one, but he stayed with it. He was so determined that sometimes dinosaurs would come and stand off in the distance and watch. I think they were amused.

  As time went by Crier got better, and later he changed to a more successful method. He got some strong vine and whittled a hook out of wood with a beer can opener he flattened and sharpened with a file from Bob’s tool box. He used bugs and worms for bait. By the end of the day, he’d have a pretty nice mess of fish.

  I was the fire builder. I’d pull grass and let it dry for a day or two, always keeping the supply ahead of the demand. When the grass looked brittle, I’d take two files from the tool box and knock them together until they made a spark, which I directed into the grass. By blowing on the spark, I could get a blaze going, and then I would feed it twigs, then larger kindling, and finally big hunks of wood. Before long, I’d have a good fire going.

  Bob cleaned the fish and cooked them by spitting them on a green limb and hanging the limb between two upright forked sticks. The fish tasted pretty good. Every night, before bed, we ended up with a pile of fish bones and fruit rinds around us.

  In time, Bob and I healed, and once we could get around, we turned industrious.

  With what we had in the toolbox, we managed to make some simple tools for cutting and splitting wood. And damn if we weren’t making crude lumber, notching it and pegging it and building a two-story house at the edge of the jungle. It wasn’t anything to impress Better Homes and Gardens, but it was all right. We managed to use the limbs of this big tree as part of it, and the tree’s foliage was so thick the house blended into it. We christened the place Jungle Home. It made me feel like I was a relative of the Swiss Family Robinson. A poor relation, to be sure, but a relation.

  The upper floor was the sleeping nest, and by stuffing it with leaves and dried grass and putting the sleeping bags and blankets on top of that, we had a pretty comfortable place,

  We also built a deck of split wood and bamboo on either side of the top floor, and it gave us a place to sit and feel the wind.

  It wasn’t paradise, but it beat being jabbed in the eye with a number two pencil.

  But, as a great philosopher once wrote over the urinal in Buddy’s Fill-up, “Things will go and change on you.”

  Crier and Bob had gone off hunting, since Crier had finally made a bow and a few arrows, and from here on out the animal populace was no longer safe. It was going to be roast rabbit and roast squirrel to go with the fish from now on.

  Or so said Crier.

  I had my doubts, since I had seen Crier practicing with that thing. It didn’t look to me that he could have hit the side of a barn with a cannon, let alone a squirrel with a dull arrow. Still, I was hoping for him. I was beginning to tire of fish and fruit, fine as it had once seemed.

  Isn’t that the way of humans? They’re never happy. One day I’m living off sardines and jerky with no water, and the next thing you know, I’m complaining about having fresh water, fish and fruit. Before long, I’d probably want a sauna in Jungle Home and someone to cater my meals.

  Anyway, Crier and Bob went off on safari, and I was home filling some water containers we had made out of thick cylinders of hol lowed-out bamboo.

  I finished the job, stripped off my blanket, and went out and sat on the deck and dangled my feet over the edge.

  I had no more than gotten comfortable, when I heard a car out on the highway, the engine straining and knocking as if it were about to explode.

  I found me a good spot between the limbs and leaves, zeroed in on the highway, and saw a battered green Galaxy. It was coughing gouts of black smoke from under its hood and puffing a matching concoction from its tailpipe.

  The driver hit down on the horn for some reason, and the horn hung.

  This wasn’t the Galaxy’s day.

  It slowed, turned off the highway onto the grassland, started weaving and picking up speed again.

  I could see a figure in the front seat, fighting the wheel as if it were some rare breed of poisonous hoop snake. Then the driver lost it or quit, because the Galaxy veered to the left toward the lake.

  The closer it got to the lake, the more speed it lost. It got down to a crawl. But it still made the water and dipped its nose in. Hot black smoke hissed up in a cloud, and the Galaxy began to slide languidly into the water.

  And I was moving.

  I had minded my own business so long, I was somewhat surprised when my Good Samaritan urges came back to me like a return bout of malaria fever. I went down the ladder two steps at a time and started running across the grassland toward the lake.

  Owing to the gradual slope of the shore, the Galaxy had still not eased all the way in. The back right window was open, and I climbed through that.

  The backseat was little more than springs and foam rubber. On the floorboard was something that looked like burnt sticks and brush. Another look and I knew it was human. Its skin was burned the color of neglected bacon. There was no hair, features or genitals. One of its arms was lifted, fingers extended and frozen in a pose that made the hand look like a miniature weed rake.

  Water began to trickle in the back window. Already the front seat was filled. The thing on the floor didn’t look alive, so I was about to go over the seat for the driver when the garden rake took hold of my ankle.

  I jerked and flesh came off of the ruined hand and ran down my ankle like dirty Jell-O. I looked at the thing and it opened its mouth, made a croaking noise that sounded like “Kill me.”

  The water would take care of that. I couldn’t. I went over the seat and into the water and found the driver, fearing he or she would be like the burned creature on
the floorboard.

  I got the driver’s head out of the water, saw it was a woman. I started pulling her into the backseat by the chin. The rising water helped me.

  The car was going under now, and I had time to get one deep breath before the whole kit and caboodle sank to the bottom of the lake.

  The mud was stirred up down there and it was like being in creamed coffee. Somehow I got out the open window and tugged the woman after me, tried to kick to the surface.

  The woman was deadweight and I couldn’t get us up. We sank to the bottom. Since we were near the edge of the lake, it wasn’t too deep, so I buried my toes in the sand and flexed my knees and shot us to the surface.

  I managed her on shore, rolled her on her stomach, got hold of her arms and worked them some, pausing to push in the middle of her back. She puked.

  I turned her over, cleared her mouth with my fingers and started mouth-tomouth. It was a stinky job and tasted of vomit, but after a short time she coughed hard once and started breathing regularly.

  She blinked at me. “Timothy?”

  “He the burned guy?”

  She nodded.

  “He’s still down there.”

  “Best,” she said, and tried to get up on her elbows. She looked at that part of my body I least wanted her to look at.

  “Small,” she said.

  “It’s cold, for Christsakes.”

  But she wasn’t listening. She had fallen back and was out of it.

  5

  Considering the way she had insulted my anatomy, I wasn’t in any rush to pick her up and carry her to Jungle Home, but I finally gave it a try. She was a pretty hefty gal.

  I put her down, went back to Jungle Home, found the keys to the camper and drove over there and got her, loaded her into the back, letting her head bump the tailgate only a couple of times.

  When I got her stretched out, I moved her hair out of her face and took my first good look at her. She wasn’t bad looking. Somewhere between eighteen and twentyone. Guessing ages is not one of my better attributes.